and oil prices cratering to ~$30 a barrel, U.S. shale will never survive long. I suspect these countries figure the U.S. is not long for the road now because the nation is so ill-equipped and fragile when faced with something like the current pandemic; they are now grabbing their best opportunity and firing any ammo they have to perhaps end the petro-dollar, while the iron is hot.

Thank you for the opportunity to read about the impending greenback demise--but it ain't dead yet. Yet. Here is my unenlightened view. Feel free to poke as many holes in it as there are in Russiagate or Swiss cheese.

Trump is having the Fed print megazillions of bucks to float the economy during this epidemic. When the economy has once again stabilized, when the free-fall of GDP stops and some stability returns, why couldn't Trump tell the world that the USG will not repay its debt to the Fed. Such an action, if economically feasible, even though difficult, would dissolve the Fed. The Fed was illicitly, secretively crafted on Jekyll Island by millionaires--remember in 1913, a million bucks was lots of money. Of course, capitalist-racist-warmongering tool of the rich, Woody W signed the bill during a Christmas congressional recess, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, which occurs often.

Back to the gold standard perhaps. Death to the Petrodollar.

A single global reserve currency has significant advantages for the world, and that's why it happened in Bretton Woods in July, 1944. It provides for multiway trading and automatically reconciles trading across more than two nations. It was conceived that this currency would be backed by gold, as stability was key. The US grew massive trade imbalances and it became impossible to reconcile this with gold transfers, so the US decoupled the dollar from gold. At that point the US had a tremendous trading advantage, it was the one country that never needed to balance its global trade. It became global theft, both in trade and capital. Other countries needed to hold dollars if they wanted to trade. Then to top this off the US agreed with Saudi Arabia (FDR 1945) to price all oil in dollars and in return the US would protect the wonderful, democratic, freedom-loving Saudi royal family. The US was spectacularly unqualified to play the role of global reserve currency, and took advantage of it in every way possible, including using it as a tool to overthrow foreign governments and punish the people of nations that were not in favor. Not surprisingly China and Russia have had it up to their eyeballs with this arrangement.

Considering the symbiotic relationship that China has with most of the world, importing resources and exporting manufactured goods, a new global trading system makes sense. Multi-nation trade imbalances can be resolved overnight through central banks using computers. Long term imbalances need to be resolved through traditional means, including re-adjusting currencies, but no nation has an inherent advantage. Even Saudi oil will be sold in the new trading exchange. This will end the era where US consumers have an endless supply of cheap goods and never have to pay fair price. It will stop the huge sucking sound of the US vacuuming up all of the world's capital, including from the poorest third world nations. It will slay the beast of the US financial sector, but will be a huge stimulus to the US manufacturing sector. Can you imagine a US where we actually make things, instead of a killing in the market and on the battlefield, just one of many nations.